David Mantell Posted January 18, 2025 Author Posted January 18, 2025 7 minutes ago, TibBo said: I guess a lot happened in those 5/10 years to give kids other options? Megadrive/Snes/Sky & cable with dedicated kids channels/premier league launched/a decline in serial killers making it safe to leave the house… Serial killers remains about the same. Kids a decade earlier all had Spectrums and BBC Micros and could program them better than their parents. There WAS a lack of alternatives for watching wrestling to ITV. In Wales there was Reslo, if you had basic cable or a pre-Astra satellite dish there was All Star on Screensport and WWF on pre-Astra Sky Channel, if you REALLY went to town with cable you could get all sorts of American territories. But for most people, each week you either tuned in or else you had other people tell you what happened. No alternatives.
Chico Torres Posted January 18, 2025 Posted January 18, 2025 In 1991 the fancy Sky kids would taunt us with tales of Earthquake breaking Andre the Giants leg and Jake trapping Warrior in a room full of snakes but to highlight the popularity of WCW over here I recall being in a Pizza Hut and being thrilled when they gave me WCW trading cards as part of a promotion they were running. Clearly they were struggling to give them away because when they saw I was a fan they gave me most of their supply. I have a lot of El Gigantes for swapsies if anyone has a Black Blood they’re looking to exchange?
David Mantell Posted January 18, 2025 Author Posted January 18, 2025 (edited) 56 minutes ago, Chico Torres said: In 1991 the fancy Sky kids would taunt us with tales of Earthquake breaking Andre the Giants leg and Jake trapping Warrior in a room full of snakes but to highlight the popularity of WCW over here I recall being in a Pizza Hut and being thrilled when they gave me WCW trading cards as part of a promotion they were running. Clearly they were struggling to give them away because when they saw I was a fan they gave me most of their supply. I have a lot of El Gigantes for swapsies if anyone has a Black Blood they’re looking to exchange? In late 1991 WCW was still doing the small hours slots and had only just moved to showing up to date WCW Pro Wrestling rather than year old episodes of NWA Worldwide squash match mania with Lance Russell (ex Memphis wrestling). You watched it if you were one or more of the following 1) a fancy WWF kid who was now just craving any and all wrestling and was even going to see Big Daddy and Kendo Nagasaki for RWS and All Star. (If you were Welsh or Southern Irish and one of these, you were really lucky as you had Reslo on S4C). 2) a PWI reader of a few years standing who fancied yourself as being an NWA fan and liked to regale people with tales of The Four Horsemen. The Road Warriors, The Midnight Express, Nikita and Koloff etc. 3) a longtime wrestling fan who was just desperate for something to watch 4) a student just back from a nightclub and zonked, for whom it was just another offering alongside Get Stuffed and America's Top 10. Edited January 18, 2025 by David Mantell
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted January 19, 2025 Paid Members Posted January 19, 2025 On 1/18/2025 at 3:45 PM, David Mantell said: In late 1991 WCW was still doing the small hours slots and had only just moved to showing up to date WCW Pro Wrestling rather than year old episodes of NWA Worldwide squash match mania with Lance Russell (ex Memphis wrestling). You watched it if you were one or more of the following 1) a fancy WWF kid who was now just craving any and all wrestling and was even going to see Big Daddy and Kendo Nagasaki for RWS and All Star. (If you were Welsh or Southern Irish and one of these, you were really lucky as you had Reslo on S4C). 2) a PWI reader of a few years standing who fancied yourself as being an NWA fan and liked to regale people with tales of The Four Horsemen. The Road Warriors, The Midnight Express, Nikita and Koloff etc. 3) a longtime wrestling fan who was just desperate for something to watch 4) a student just back from a nightclub and zonked, for whom it was just another offering alongside Get Stuffed and America's Top 10. 5. A child who had irresponsible parents who let them stay up way to late.
David Mantell Posted January 19, 2025 Author Posted January 19, 2025 59 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said: 5. A child who had irresponsible parents who let them stay up way to late. Parents without a VCR obviously. (Says he, who sneaked out to the lounge at 4am ever Thursday night/Fri morn in 1988-1989 to the lounge to watch WWF Challenge billed as Superstars of Wrestling and later, when "banned" from wrestling while doing A Level retakes, spent his lunch money on a Casio pocket TV to watch Worldwide and went regularly to cultural events at the Spanish Institute in Kensington, most of which were genuine but a couple of which actually took place at the Fairfield Hall Croydon. Eventually I got into university on the second attempt and the pocket TV went with me, coming in useful as the moment my parents disappeared down the road I could openly be a fan again and even blazenly buy WCW and WWF tickets to the NEC and NIA.)
Paid Members BigJag Posted January 19, 2025 Paid Members Posted January 19, 2025 Do we know why WWF Wrestling Challenge was stuck on at such a crazy time? It did force me to learn how to set the VCR Timer record function. I remember watching the debut of Dingo Warrior on one of those shows. Jimmy Hart and Lord Alfred Hayes were on commentary. I remember Hart being less than impressed with Warrior.
Merzbow Posted January 19, 2025 Posted January 19, 2025 10 minutes ago, BigJag said: Do we know why WWF Wrestling Challenge was stuck on at such a crazy time? It did force me to learn how to set the VCR Timer record function. I remember watching the debut of Dingo Warrior on one of those shows. Jimmy Hart and Lord Alfred Hayes were on commentary. I remember Hart being less than impressed with Warrior. I remember the Wrestling Challenge show where he made his debut as the Ultimate Warrior, I think I was up puking in the night so my mum let me watch with her. I distinctly recall her knowing his previous name so she must have seen one of these earlier shows. The same ultra late time slot would have had wrestling from Florida some weeks, too, another night where I was ill I got to catch some of that. Genuinely some of my earliest memories.
Paid Members BigJag Posted January 19, 2025 Paid Members Posted January 19, 2025 Yep. The Florida shows were GCW. Scotty Flamingo (Jonny Polo/Raven) was featured.
David Mantell Posted January 19, 2025 Author Posted January 19, 2025 (edited) 1 hour ago, BigJag said: Do we know why WWF Wrestling Challenge was stuck on at such a crazy time? It did force me to learn how to set the VCR Timer record function. I remember watching the debut of Dingo Warrior on one of those shows. Jimmy Hart and Lord Alfred Hayes were on commentary. I remember Hart being less than impressed with Warrior. It was cheap filler programming for the graveyard slot and it fell below Greg Dyke's radar. Night time was a brand new timeslot since about a year earlier, batchloads of tapes would be sold to an individual ITV region and they would run through it from start to finish. When Sky One relaunched on Astra, the WWF stopped selling runs of episodes to the distributor and so they had to get tapes elsewhere. Back in January 1990, actually being able to get "the NWA" on television after a good couple of years of reading about it in Pro Wrestling Illustrated was an incredible life chasing thrill. I remember seeing Superstars Of Wrestling listed and being glad it was back, then reading the blurb underneath saying that The Road Warriors, Sting, Ric Flair and Lex Luger were all on and thinking a miracle had happened. P.S. of course Jimmy Hart was unimpressed, he was a heel. Edited January 19, 2025 by David Mantell
Samblaze Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 On 1/14/2025 at 8:29 PM, Merzbow said: It was on the old BSB before Sky bought them, wasn't it? Was on Sky Sports too. One show in 91 which shows how hard behind they were had Flair vs Horner, Sting got involved in a Brawl and Gonzalez came out acting as a Ref ?
David Mantell Posted January 20, 2025 Author Posted January 20, 2025 (edited) 1 hour ago, Samblaze said: Was on Sky Sports too. One show in 91 which shows how hard behind they were had Flair vs Horner, Sting got involved in a Brawl and Gonzalez came out acting as a Ref ? Sky showed old WWF from 1984/1985. I remember buying either TVTimes or Radio Times and the blub mentioned Samoan Sika, the Missing Link and a couple of other people long gone from the WWF by then. Both companies only cared about showing up to date tapes when they were following in with a live invasion. In WCW's case that only occurred in late 1991. Edited January 20, 2025 by David Mantell
Merzbow Posted January 20, 2025 Posted January 20, 2025 1 hour ago, Samblaze said: Was on Sky Sports too. One show in 91 which shows how hard behind they were had Flair vs Horner, Sting got involved in a Brawl and Gonzalez came out acting as a Ref ? I think that would have been for a short time only then, a holdover from the company they just bought. I'm sure WWF wouldn't have been happy sharing the channels, they were a major part of Sky's selling point at that time.
David Mantell Posted January 20, 2025 Author Posted January 20, 2025 (edited) A thought: If the Astra satellite had been ready to house a WWF boom a year earlier or ITV's contract with Joint, All Star and the WWF had lasted a year longer, it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Greg Dyke to cancel wrestling and it would have stayed on, perhaps to the present day. A further thought: How would this have panned out? I think WCW would have replaced WWF for the American specials and Joint and All Star would have swapped percentages of coverage. Things would have got interesting in 1995 when RWS (the former Joint) closed down and Superchannel poached WCW. Possibly Rumble or TWA would have nabbed RWS's spot but who would the American specials have gone to? ECW was unscreenable on late 90s ITV. USWA was dying off. Smokey Mountain already pretty much gone. Reslo also finished that year. Kent Walton would have vehemently objected to Hammerlock, WAW or any of the later Americanised/New School promotions. Perhaps they would have replaced the American wrestling with Japan or the CWA/EWP. Edited January 20, 2025 by David Mantell
Paid Members Statto Posted January 23, 2025 Paid Members Posted January 23, 2025 Thought about making a thread for this bit decided to put here as it's become a bit more of a general "wrestling on UK terrestrial TV" discussion and wasn't sure it was threadworthy in terms of generating much new discussion about the wider topic, but trusting the forum's tolerance for schooldays anecdotes. It's 25 years ago today that WWF PPV arrived on UK terrestrial TV, with the Royal Rumble on Channel 4. An event that was controversial on a wider scale (Mae Young exposure , level of violence in the street fight, C4 finally realising there wouldn't be any natural ad breaks so just fading to one in the middle of The Rock's promo) resulting in the 50 minute delay on all future "live" PPVs, but also that caused great controversy closer to home for me. I'd fairly recently started at Sixth Form - my tiny village high school didn't have one so I went to one in a slightly less tiny market town. I quickly learned this Sixth Form loved a sweepstake - it was from the one run for the 1999 Rugby World Cup that I acquired the nickname Statto that became my username here a few years later. Being the boom period it was, there were plenty of casual wrestling fans around, but this Sixth Form had two notable wrestling superfans - me, and my mate Craig (who very infrequently posted here a very long time ago as @Dork - also a nickname he'd acquired at said school - and who reminded me of all this earlier today). Craig realised that the Royal Rumble was the perfect sweepstake event, so we set about organising one. I drew #24 - a decent shot at a winner. We reach the night of the Rumble. Being it was on C4 not Sky, I vividly remember watching it in bed on my awful little 12inch or whatever it was TV/VCR combo. Cracking show, particularly the Tables match and the Street Fight. Then came the Rumble. As the match progressed, I kept a detailed record of the entrants (& eliminations, cos why not) on the middle pages of my Business Studies exercise book. Noted Kaientai in the margins as wasn't sure if they'd count them as entrants who jumped their order or something. As we moved closer to #24, I was willing every entrant who came out to not the The Rock, who was strongly expected to win. Buzzer goes for #24 - "IF YA SMELLLL!" Jackpot. Rocky wins in due fashion, I'm £19 better off (£20 to winner, £5 to runner up, £5 "booby prize" to whoever got Sixth Form favourite but unlikely winner Road Dogg.) You could do a lot with a £20 note in January 2000. Next day, all hell breaks loose. Wrestling's fixed, and so was the sweepstake they all cried. Obviously, we'd seen the "script". And let's not even talk about when they revealed on Raw that Rock hadn't actually really won at all...
David Mantell Posted January 23, 2025 Author Posted January 23, 2025 3 hours ago, Statto said: Mae Young exposure That incident singlehandedly killed wrestling on the traditional channels for 15 years Dec 2001-Dec 2016 once the WWF/C4 contract expired. I've never followed current American wrestling since. Luckily it was just that point All Star started getting a new generation in like Dean Allmark, Robbie Dynamite (Berzins), Kid Cool, Mikey Whiplash, Playboy Johnny Midnight etc etc, (mostly from GBH in Hanley after the council there banned it.)
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